Our History

For many years, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, Sr. assisted hundreds of clients with their goal to reduce their same-sex attractions and explore their heterosexual potential.

A licensed clinical psychologist, he believed that our bodies tell us who we are, and that our bodies have made us for heterosexuality.

He began this work in 1981 as the originator of reparative therapy. His pioneering work ended when he passed away suddenly last year. But a dedicated staff of licensed therapists trained by Dr. Nicolosi still remain, and they are available to carry on his work.

His clients would tell him the following: “I know, on some deep level, that I'm a heterosexual man. But I'm troubled by homosexual attractions that prevent me from being who I really am."

Many men were victims of homosexual sexual abuse. They don't believe that "gay" could ever describe them. But that childhood experience has left them with attractions that they find compelling, although ultimately not satisfying. These feelings interfere with their values, their marriages, and deeply held beliefs of who they really are.

There are many other factors of childhood that can lead a man down a homosexual path. Some men had a negative experience with women (such as a disempowering mother) that blocks them from being attracted to females. Others failed to make a strong connection with their fathers, and in adulthood, they romanticize maleness. Still others successfully made the initial bond with their fathers, but the father was not effective enough to protect the boy from the trauma of a “crazy-making” mother; the boy then develops a longing for a salient man to intervene and "rescue" him, which becomes eroticized as he grows older. Many of these men don't consider themselves gay.

The legitimate therapist will not simply accept at face value, the client’s gay feelings. He must always ask “why,” rather than locking the client into an unwanted gay self-identification.

Perhaps you, too, believe that these feelings do not represent “who you really are.”

The Science Behind Our Work

In 1992, Dr. Nicolosi and two psychiatrists organized a professional association called the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Today, NARTH has over 1000 members around the world.

Former American Psychological Association President Nicholas Cummings, Ph.D., during his years as Chief Psychologist at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco, said, “Of the patients I oversaw who sought to change their orientation, hundreds were successful.” [USA Today]

Robert Perloff, PhD

Another Past President of the American Psychological Association, Robert Perloff, Ph.D., endorsed one of Dr. Nicolosi's books with these words:

“The author has contributed enormously to the sexual literature...his challenging and forceful commentary is must-reading from top to bottom, from stem to stern...The policies and resolutions of organizations such as the American Psychological Association... would be better framed and more truthfully based were these organizations...open to the sentiments promoting reparative therapy.”

In recent years, the psychological professional has become so ideological that it is no longer open to competing ideas. Few members remain who are still willing to speak up; the career cost is simply too high.

For a perspective on this process, we quote Dr. Nicholas Cummings. He was a mainline psychologist, a political liberal, and a promoter of intellectual diversity. Dr. Cummings served as president of the APA before the Association closed itself off to the diversity of competing worldviews. He also successfully worked with clients with unwanted homosexuality. Lest Dr. Cummings' words--spoken just 12 years ago-- be forgotten, we reprint them here.....Psych Association Loses Credibility, Say Insiders

No one wants to be the bearer of bad news about a group that has suffered discrimination. But because homosexuality is rooted in a gender wound, the dark side of gay life keeps stubbornly emerging, in spite of public-relations efforts to submerge it.

CLIENT STORIES

My name is Mohammed and I am 28 years old. I am a graduate student living in Cairo. I found Dr. Nicolosi on the Internet at a time when my life was really dark, really painful. I could not stand my same-sex attractions.